Tutoring Notebook

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TUTORING NOTEBOOK

Tutoring Notebook

Meera. R. Mehtaji

Virginia Commonwealth University

Assessment

Background Information

Jack is a fourth grade, male student, studying in a Richmond Public School. He was born on 20th April 2002. He was 9 years 4 months and 29 days on the day of the QR-5 reading assessment. Jack has been identified as a student with a learning disability. He has significant difficulty in reading and has an IEP to help him achieve his academic goals. Jack will not be given his state SOL for reading; instead he will be completing his Virginia Grade Level Assessment (VGLA). As the tester is a volunteer, she does not have access to his past records and cumulative files.

Jack is a good listener and can answer questions to the content read orally to him. There are times when Jack can only read certain parts of the comprehension texts, but he uses contextual clues to answer comprehension questions. His class teacher, Ms. H, is extremely intrigued by his ability and often remarks, “I don’t know how he does it, but he just manages to put it all together.”

Behavioral Observations

Jack is an obedient student and willing to follow instruction. He will attend to the task on hand and follow instructions to complete his work. He finds reading very laborious and gets frustrated easily. During the first session with the tester, Jack completed his work and was receptive to corrections. He enjoys drawing and likes watching ‘Transformers’. After completing his journal writing every day, he spends his free time drawing in class.

The QRI-5 was administered post-lunch. It was a long day and Jack had already had one reading class in the morning. He was tired, but he did not complain during the testing period. He wanted the tester to read a long story after the testing was over. This show that he greatly enjoys listening to content read out to him.

Results

Reading

The tester gave Jack the Primer 2 wordlist, on the QRI-5. He could read 16 of the 20 words automatically, while he identified two words and got two incorrect. The total number of correct words read was 18 out of 20, this put him in the independent level.

The next word list the tester gave him was the Level one. On this word list he got only 7 correct, he had to identify all the words and was at the frustration level.

To get a better base line the tester gave Jack the Primer 3 word list. He could read 6 out of 20 words automatically, while he identified 4 words and got 10 incorrect. The total number of correct words read was 10 out of 20, this put him at the frustration level. This demonstrates that Jack has a limited sight word vocabulary in his repertoire.

The word list established that Jack was at the Primer level of reading. The tester gave him one Narrative and one Expository comprehension passage. The Narrative comprehension passage was titled ‘Spring and Fall’. Jack was not fluent in his reading, it was slow and laborious and he decoded one word at a time. He took him 1minute and 45 seconds to complete the passage. He read 42 words per minute correctly. He had nine miscues in his reading. His errors included substitutions and one omission. There were two errors self-corrected. The miscue analysis puts his reading to the frustration level.

Jack knew fall and spring are seasons, but could not differentiate between them. Thus he did not have a clear concept of ‘spring and fall’. He could recall only 6 of the 28 ideas. As all the questions were explicit he answered 4 out of 5 answers correctly. The results put him at the Instructional level. This exhibited what his classroom teacher said about him, as he used a lot of contextual clues to answer the comprehension questions.

The Expository comprehension passage that Jack read was “Who lives near lakes?” In this passage, too, his fluency was affected, his reading was laborious and choppy. It took him 2 minutes and 10 seconds to read the passage. He read 21 words per minute correctly. He had 18 miscues in his reading. His errors were mostly omissions as he could not decode them.

Jack could explain what animals live near lakes, or why people live near lakes. He could recall 9 out 18 ideas. He answered two explicit and one implicit question correctly out of the three in each category. The results put Jack at the Frustration level of reading comprehension.

Jack had more difficulty reading Expository material, as there were many more new words in the passage. His narrative reading was also choppy and he could not decode all of the words. As he had some idea about the passage he was better able to answer explicit questions in both the passages and could answer only one implicit question of the question.

Spelling

Jack was tested with spelling from ‘Words their Way’. Jack was given the primary word list. He got only 3 words correct out of the 26 words in the list. This demonstrates that Jack has difficulties with both Phonological Awareness as well as Phonics. He could not identify beginning and ending sounds, he had difficulties with blends and no clue of word families as well. He could not use syllabication to break up and identify every part of the word. This also affects his vocabulary and comprehension when he is reading a passage, as it affects his decoding skills.

Writing

The tester assessed a sample of his journal to evaluate him on his writing skills. The sentences were short and had limited vocabulary. There were grammatical as well as spelling mistakes in his writing. His written work also does not have a flow and he jumps from one idea to another, thus the writing lacks cohesion.

Jacks’ writing is laborious and not very uniform; there are capital letters in the middle of the sentences. He only punctuation he uses is the period at the end of the sentence, there are no other punctuations in his writing.

Instructional Recommendations

Jack needs intense remediation in reading. It is recommended that Jack is taught reading using the following strategies.

 Phonic strategy

 Letter - sound relation

 Blending and Separating sound

 Using Analogies to decode

Jack is able to comprehend the bigger picture but fails to glean relevant information from passages to answer specific questions. He needs to be taught methods to tackle comprehension questions, using some of these strategies.

 Summarization

 Listing the main idea

 Story maps

All these activities will help Jack improve his reading skills.

TUTORING LESSON PLAN

Date: 10/24/11

Session #: 1

Start time: 10:30 amEnd time: 11:00 am

Tutoring Notes/Observations

1. A stopwatch that displays seconds
2. A pencil
3. Student form for CBM
4. Teacher form for CBM
5. Graph
6. The story book, “The snowy day by Ezra Jack Keats.”

1. The teacher presents the student with the book, “The snowy day by Ezra Jack Keats.”
2. The teacher reads the title and asks the student, “What does it mean? What do you think this book is about?”
3. The teacher read the first page, the student read the first page.
4. The teacher reads each page and the student reads the page back tracking his lines and modeling.
5. The teacher stops to check for new vocabulary words, and explain the meanings of these words.
6. The teacher pauses to ask prediction questions and they check if their predictions were correct.
7. The teacher and the student read the entire book.

Lesson Reflection Log 1

TUTORING LESSON PLAN

Date: 10/31/11

Session #: 2

Start time: 11:30 amEnd time: 12:00 pm

Tutoring Notes/Observations

1. A stopwatch that displays seconds
2. A pencil
3. Student form for CBM
4. Teacher form for CBM
5. Graph
6. The passage, “Frog or toad”,
7. Question and answer worksheet.

1. The teacher reads the title of the passage and asks the student if he know what a frog or a toad is?
2. The teacher reads the first paragraph. She uses syllabification to decode new and unfamiliar words and explains their meaning.
3. The student re-reads what the teacher had read. They stop at the new words and the teacher helps the student to syllabify unfamiliar words.
4. The teacher reads the second paragraph and the student rereads it.
5. They follow the same procedure till the end of the passage.

Lesson Reflection Log 2

TUTORING LESSON PLAN

Date: 11/2/11

Session #: 3

Start time: 11:15 amEnd time: 11:45 am

Tutoring Notes/Observations

1. A stopwatch that displays seconds
2. A pencil
3. Student form for CBM
4. Teacher form for CBM
5. Graph
6. The poetry, “How to delay your bedtime”

1. The teacher presents the student with the poem, “The surprise”
2. The teacher reads the title and asks the student, “If he likes to stay up late at night”
3. The teacher reads the whole poem to the student.
4. The teacher discusses the meaning of the poem with the student.
5. The student chooses a character in the poem and the teacher is the other character in the poem.
6. The teacher and the student take turns reading their part of the poem and read the poem.
7. They read the poem again, this time reversing their roles, so that the student reads the teachers part and the teacher reads the students part

Lesson Reflection Log 3

TUTORING LESSON PLAN

Date: 11/18/11

Session #: 4

Start time: 11:00 am End time: 11:30 am

Tutoring Notes/Observations

1. A stopwatch that displays seconds
2. A pencil
3. Student form for CBM
4. Teacher form for CBM
5. Graph
6. The passage, “I am who I am”
7. Question and answer worksheet

1. The teacher reads the title of the passage and asks the student if he knows the meaning of the title?
2. The teacher reads the first paragraph. She uses syllabification to decode new and unfamiliar words and explains their meanings.
3. The student re-reads what the teacher has read. They stop at the new words the teacher helps the student to syllabify unfamiliar words.
4. The teacher reads the second paragraph and the student rereads it.
5. They follow the same procedure till the end of the passage.

Lesson Reflection Log 4